CosmicMonkey
08-20-2008, 07:07 PM
I have to say, I've never really used MAME or any other arcade emulator. It's also quite confusing considering the amount of different versions of MAME and Final Burn.
Anyway, I randomly checked the Ultimarc site and found there is a new version of the Arcade VGA card (http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html).
When you run most MAME games, a process called Hardware Stretch is used. This is needed because most arcade games do not use PC resolutions such as 640 X 480, 1024 X 768 etc. They use resolutions such as 256 X 264. These arcade resolutions could not, until now, be displayed in Windows on a PC monitor. To get around that problem, MAME tells the VGA card to stretch the image to fit the PC resolution. This means that the pixel-to-pixel mapping of the original game onto the monitor screen is lost as there is no longer a one-to-one relationship between the pixels which the game designer created and the displayed pixels. As arcade game resolutions are generally low, this creates a loss of quality. It is important to note that using a PC monitor will NOT produce an arcade monitor-like picture as PC monitors have a much higher dot pitch and finer scan width than arcade monitors. But using the ArcadeVGA will give a crisper picture than an ordinary VGA card, at the lower resolutions. There are some comparison pictures on the info page.
Another benefit is that the vertical refresh rates of the ArcadeVGA modes are tailored to Mame games which means a smoother motion on horizontally moving graphics.
So this is good, much more accurate and all that? Anyone using this new version with an LCD monitor?
Basically, I've always been worried about how accurate the emulation is and things like input lag and lag caused by an LCD upscaling the signal. This video card seems like it will fix any scaling issues, but what about input lag? What is the best emulator to use to play vert shooters on an LCD screen?
Anyway, I randomly checked the Ultimarc site and found there is a new version of the Arcade VGA card (http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html).
When you run most MAME games, a process called Hardware Stretch is used. This is needed because most arcade games do not use PC resolutions such as 640 X 480, 1024 X 768 etc. They use resolutions such as 256 X 264. These arcade resolutions could not, until now, be displayed in Windows on a PC monitor. To get around that problem, MAME tells the VGA card to stretch the image to fit the PC resolution. This means that the pixel-to-pixel mapping of the original game onto the monitor screen is lost as there is no longer a one-to-one relationship between the pixels which the game designer created and the displayed pixels. As arcade game resolutions are generally low, this creates a loss of quality. It is important to note that using a PC monitor will NOT produce an arcade monitor-like picture as PC monitors have a much higher dot pitch and finer scan width than arcade monitors. But using the ArcadeVGA will give a crisper picture than an ordinary VGA card, at the lower resolutions. There are some comparison pictures on the info page.
Another benefit is that the vertical refresh rates of the ArcadeVGA modes are tailored to Mame games which means a smoother motion on horizontally moving graphics.
So this is good, much more accurate and all that? Anyone using this new version with an LCD monitor?
Basically, I've always been worried about how accurate the emulation is and things like input lag and lag caused by an LCD upscaling the signal. This video card seems like it will fix any scaling issues, but what about input lag? What is the best emulator to use to play vert shooters on an LCD screen?